Hands On Samsung's Giant, Curving OLED TV

Samsung, not content to stop at its imprisoned UltraHD televisions, has announced its latest technologically marvellous curiosity: an OLED television with a display that curves.

Samsung touts the “panorama effect” and “life-like viewing” that a curve like this provides, but the biggest benefit seems to be that the curve makes all viewing angles equal. And that’s true to a point; the curve is very slight, but the viewing feels uniform. But the biggest effect of the form is one of envelopment — it’s a bit like having a planetarium on your wall, which is both disorienting and majestic.

Price? Availability? Details? Ask not these questions, for there are no answers and may never be. Prototypes like this are wonderful and they highlight technology’s potential. But you won’t be able to buy this anytime soon (mass-producing curved panels would be an unholy undertaking), and even if you could, you wouldn’t be able to afford it. But it’s still nice to see Samsung bring something different to the table (err, media console?).